February 8, 2016

February 8, 2016

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing this week will consider whether to create a new teaching permit in place of a decades-old permit that limits the amount of time substitutes can fill in for teachers on medical and other legally required leave.

The time limits expose students unnecessarily to a string of rotating substitute teachers, which educators have long complained interrupts classroom instruction and exposes students to instructors with a range of teaching styles and with varying levels of competence and expertise.

The issue is attracting additional attention because school districts throughout California are increasingly having to rely on substitute teachers without full credentials to blunt the impact of a growing teacher shortage in almost every subject area.

But that strategy has been complicated by an “Emergency 30 Day Substitute Teaching Permit” created by the credentialing commission more than three decades ago that says substitutes who fill in for teachers who are out for medical reasons or other longer term leaves can spend no more than 30 cumulative school days – or approximately six weeks – in one classroom.

The limits are even more stringent in special education classes, where substitute teachers can’t spend more than 20 cumulative days in one classroom.

With such long leave periods, substitutes in many cases are needed for far more than the current 20- or 30-day limit.

“The current solutions available to employers for appropriately covering such leaves, which can extend up to five calendar months, do not best serve California’s students,” notes a memo written by commission staff for the commission’s meeting in Sacramento on Thursday.

Even if the substitute does not have a full teaching credential, the substitute may be doing a good job, often under difficult circumstances. But a district has no choice but to replace him or her with a series of new and untested substitute teachers, who may not know the students and must familiarize themselves afresh with the teaching materials.

Strategies like these “undermine students’ access to quality instruction,” asserted a report by the Learning Policy Institute, a research and policy organization in Palo Alto. The principal author of the report is Linda Darling-Hammond, the institute’s president, who is also chair of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

To tackle the problem, the commission will consider an action item at its Thursday meeting that would create a new “Teaching Permit for Statutory Leave” to allow substitutes to stay in their positions as long as the regular teachers are on “statutory” leave, if necessary for as long as a year. The permits would also be renewable.

According to the commission memo recommending adoption of the proposal, the new permit is intended to provide a “consistent and stable learning environment” for students, and “eliminate the need for rotating through several substitute teachers.”

“It’s definitely not an option to fill your regular teaching vacancies,” cautioned Charlie Watters, the commission’s director of certification. “This will present districts with an option of having one trained person in the classroom for the duration of a teacher of record’s leave.”

Andrew Lucia, assistant superintendent for human resources at the Santa Clara Unified School District in the South Bay Area, said being able to keep substitutes longer would benefit students. “It will allow for more continuity for the students to have the same person instructing them without having a rotating wheel of subs coming in every 30 days,” he said.

He noted that of 900 teachers in his district on any particular day, 70 to 90 were substitutes for teachers out on statutory leave, with a full-time staffer devoted to managing their assignments.

The problem has been further exacerbated by a shortage of substitutes in many districts. In those cases, after the substitute’s 20-day or 30-day stint is over, districts must scramble to find another one to replace him or her.

The issue is affecting large numbers of school districts. Four out of five respondents to a commission survey of more than 750 school districts and county offices of education conducted last fall said the impact on students of replacing substitutes after 20 or 30 days was “substantial.” Only 2 percent said the impact of having to rotate substitutes was “minimal” or “not an issue.”

The impact on special education students was especially severe, as these students typically need the most stability and continuity in their classroom environments.

One survey respondent from a district that serves a large number of autistic children said those students “are simply not able to cope with change, so forcing our district to rotate substitutes is devastating to them.”

The new permit being considered by the credentialing commission would require a substitute teacher to go through an orientation and preparation program of at least 45 hours, and also to receive guidance from a “mentor teacher.”

Even in districts not facing a teacher shortage, the time limits on how long a substitute can be in the classroom create problems. “It’s almost like you have to go through the whole drama once again: let’s find someone, let’s acclimate them to the school site, and let’s make sure the kids and the parents are on board,” said Robert Verdi, assistant superintendent of human resources at the Moreno Valley Unified School District in Southern California.

The stakes are high, he said. “It creates an inconsistency in that classroom and that student’s environment and that usually doesn’t bode well for student achievement,” Verdi said.

Teachers unions have traditionally backed the 30-day limit on substitutes in order to ensure that school districts don’t use them to avoid hiring full-time, fully credentialed teachers. Watters said that the commission would address those concerns by limiting the new permit just to teachers on statutory leave.

Among the many permits and credentials that exist in the maze of California’s complex teacher credentialing system, two permits do exist that allow districts to fill teacher vacancies for up to a year with long-term substitutes. These are known as Provisional Internship Permits (PIP) or Short-Term Staff Permits (STSP) and can only be used to fill truly vacant teacher positions, not ones when the teacher is on temporary leave.

And when a position is vacant, districts must show that they have made an effort to recruit a fully credentialed teacher before they can hire a substitute for a year.

But as the memo to the commission describing the new permit noted, those requirements are not consistent with the gaps left by teachers on statutory leaves, who often have to take a leave as result of an emergency or unexpected family situation. Those leaves are often “spontaneous in nature and may begin or end with little or no notice,” commission staff noted. That means that districts don’t have time to do the outside recruiting required under the Provisional Internship and Short Term Staff permits.

The commission’s Watters pointed out that it is not often that a new teaching permit is introduced in California. He hoped this one would attract more substitutes to the classroom because of the prospect of longer term, more stable employment. It would also save districts the time and cost of constantly having to replace substitutes, at least in some classrooms. “It will be good for students and for employers,” he said.

EdSource staff contributed to this story.

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Louis Freedberg writes about education reforms in California and nationally, and is the executive director of EdSource

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MB2 months ago2 months ago

This post forgot to mention in addition to the 20 or 30 day restriction it is within one school year. So, one could do 20-30 days in June and again September another 20-30 days because it would be a different school year.

Sara10 months ago10 months ago

Have there been any updates on this? I am a 30-day credentialed substitute and have been asked to take one day off per week (while writing sub plans) to fill a 35 day job, and was recently turned down for a 25 day job (because of the possibility of an additional 20 day extension) that the teacher requested me for. It's not as though long term subbing in my district gives much of a pay … Read More

Have there been any updates on this? I am a 30-day credentialed substitute and have been asked to take one day off per week (while writing sub plans) to fill a 35 day job, and was recently turned down for a 25 day job (because of the possibility of an additional 20 day extension) that the teacher requested me for. It’s not as though long term subbing in my district gives much of a pay bump anyway (an additional $15 per day). I do it for the kids and to help out friends who are teachers and am not planning on becoming a full-time classroom teacher. It would sure be nice if we substitutes. had unions too. Or pay raises after our 500th day of work. Or anything.

Diana Flasher1 year ago1 year ago

I am a credentialed and experienced teacher recently hired to be a long term sub in my district. My new students (10th grade science) told me that I was their fourth teacher this year, and that they has a different sub every day for the last month. After one week (last Friday), I was dismissed from the job by the assistant superintendent, who said that the school was "restructuring the class". Now that I have … Read More

I am a credentialed and experienced teacher recently hired to be a long term sub in my district. My new students (10th grade science) told me that I was their fourth teacher this year, and that they has a different sub every day for the last month. After one week (last Friday), I was dismissed from the job by the assistant superintendent, who said that the school was “restructuring the class”. Now that I have left the school, other teachers are texting me that the students had another non-credentailed sub today.. Is this legal? There are still almost two months to go in the school year.

Rori2 years ago2 years ago

A year later and still there has been nothing to remedy this problem.
Subs have it bad enough; we're paid per-diem and the salary's garbage despite that. We receive no benefits, no paid time off, our sick leave options are a joke, and the system continues to go out of its way to find new and inventive methods of screwing us over. Every summer these people send me a letter granting me "reasonable assurance" that … Read More

A year later and still there has been nothing to remedy this problem.

Subs have it bad enough; we’re paid per-diem and the salary’s garbage despite that. We receive no benefits, no paid time off, our sick leave options are a joke, and the system continues to go out of its way to find new and inventive methods of screwing us over. Every summer these people send me a letter granting me “reasonable assurance” that I’ll have a job in the fall. In theory it sounds like a nice thing to do, but in practice it stops me from collecting unemployment – something I pay into regardless – while I am effectively unemployed through the summer, and often into the fall since very few teachers call out sick in the first month of school. To remedy this problem, I thought I’d sub long-term to make up for my nonexistent income over the summer, but now for some arbitrary reason I’m not allowed to substitute teach for a single teacher longer than 30 days. Nice. Just stop me from making any money at all, why don’t you? And to top it off, every year I’m expected to pay to renew my license, and the fee is up there with a day’s pay. What a joke.

And then they have the nerve, the gall, to wonder why there’s constantly a sub shortage. Like, gee, I wonder why people aren’t lining up to be an on-call employee paid too little to even survive in California.

I wonder why people aren’t lining up to work all year, lose chunks of their paychecks to unemployment insurance every month, and then not even be able to take advantage of those benefits each year when you’re genuinely unemployed. I wonder why people aren’t bursting at the seams to never have a job longer than a single month, even in perfectly genuine cases where the teacher is out on maternity leave, because of some statute decreed 30 years ago that now exists as a way to block subs from getting decent pay for a respectable period of time. Looking at the proposed hoops they’re expecting a substitute teacher to jump through for an extended allowance on the amount of consecutive days they can work – when they’re the ones who need us – is laughable at best. Don’t make us go through more credentialing. You already ask that we have a 4 year college degree to earn an annual salary that’s barely above a McDonalds employee. Just remove the stupid rule and let good substitutes get rewarded – for once – with decent pay.

There’s genuinely no reward for even being good at your job as a substitute. So many districts don’t let teachers pick preferred subs, and no matter how well you do, you’ll still get paid the same amount as the jerk who comes in and does literally nothing all day. There are no performance-based pay raises. You won’t get called more often for jobs by the automated job-caller system the longer you’ve been there. There’s nothing. Nothing at all.

The single most common question I receive from staff members is “Are you looking to become a full time teacher?” While it might have been true at some point in time, the truth now is I have one foot out the door. As soon as I get income from another source, I’m done dealing with all of this. Your failed policies are a cold slap in the face from a job that already had terrible financial compensation and almost no incentive to innovate or perform well.

This state treats its substitutes like garbage, and I hope every sub out there finds something better.

Nathaniel Sousa3 years ago3 years ago

I’m a substitute teacher about 75% of the time, and I see that those teachers who complain about substitutes letting their students goof off are the ones who don’t have control of their classes. It’s night and day the difference in subbing for a teacher who is in charge and one who isn’t.

Phil4 years ago4 years ago

The credentialing process is mostly about protecting the interests of the credentialing industry, mainly power and revenue. An independent inquiry, not connected with or staffed by, members beholden to the credentialing industry, ought to be conducted to determine how best to identify persons who can teach effectively regardless of having jumped through credentialing industry hoops.

Christian Dorn4 years ago4 years ago

Rather than attracting new teachers or addressing the problems that make them leave, let’s just make it easier to replace them with subs!

Louis Freedberg4 years ago4 years ago

Actually, as noted in article, this permit is for teachers on temporary leave for medical reasons mostly, so this addresses a different problem — how to fill relatively short term vacancies with more qualified substitutes.

Christian Dorn4 years ago4 years ago

Rather than make attracting new teachers or solving the problems that make them leave, let’s just make it easier to replace them with subs!